Contributors

Overview

Metro is our series of microcontroller boards for use with the Arduino IDE. This new Metro board looks a whole lot like our original Metro 328, but with a huge upgrade. Instead of the ATmega328, this Metro features a ATSAMD21G18 chip, an ARM Cortex M0+. It's our first Metro that is designed for use with CircuitPython! CircuitPython is our beginner-oriented flavor of MicroPython - and as the name hints at, its a small but full-featured version of the popular Python programming language specifically for use with circuitry and electronics.

Not only can you use CircuitPython, but the Metro M0 is also usable in the Arduino IDE.

At the Metro M0's heart is an ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 processor, clocked at 48 MHz and at 3.3V logic, the same one used in the new Arduino Zero. This chip has a whopping 256K of FLASH (8x more than the Atmega328) and 32K of RAM (16x as much)! This chip comes with built in USB so it has USB-to-Serial program & debug capability built in with no need for an FTDI-like chip.

Power the METRO with 7-9V polarity protected DC or the micro USB connector to any 5V USB source. The 2.1mm DC jack has an on/off switch next to it so you can turn off your setup easily. The METRO will automagically switch between USB and DC.

METRO has 25 GPIO pins, 12 of which are analog in, and one of which is a true analog out. There's a hardware SPI port, hardware I2C port and hardware UART. Logic level is 3.3V

Native USB, there's no need for a hardware USB to Serial converter as the Metro M0 has built in USB support. When used to act like a serial device, the USB interface can be used by any computer to listen/send data to the METRO, and can also be used to launch and update code via the bootloader. It can also act like a keyboard, mouse or MIDI device as well.

Four indicator LEDs and one NeoPixel, on the front edge of the PCB, for easy debugging. One green power LED, two RX/TX LEDs for data being sent over USB, and a red LED connected. Next to the reset button there is an RGB NeoPixel that can be used for any purpose.

2 MB SPI Flash storage chip is included on board. You can use the SPI Flash storage like a very tiny hard drive. When used in Circuit Python, the 2 MB flash acts as storage for all your scripts, libraries and files. When used in Arduino, you can read/write files to it, like a little datalogger or SD card, and then with our helper program, access the files over USB.

Easy reprogramming, comes pre-loaded with the UF2 bootloader, which looks like a USB key. Simply drag firmware on to program, no special tools or drivers needed! It can be used by MakeCode or Arduino IDE (in bossa compatibility)

Pinouts

The Metro M0 is chock-full of microcontroller goodness. There's also a lot of pins and ports. We'll take you a tour of them now!

Power Connections

There's a lot of ways to power the Metro M0 Express, and a lot of ways to get power out as well.

There are two primary ways to power the Metro:

Through the Micro USB port up at the top left

Through the DC jack at the bottom left

The MicroUSB jack provides 5V at 500mA or so, there is a fuse that will shut off temporarily when more than 1000mA is drawn, this is to protect a computer USB port. You can plug this into any computer or USB charger with a USB cable. You can draw up to 500mA between the Vin, 5V and 3.3V supplies (combined).

The DC Jack is a 5.5mm/2.1mm center-positive DC connector, which is the most common available. Provide about 6V-12V here to power the Metro. There is no fuse on this connection so you can draw more current, up to 800mA between the 5V and 3.3V supplies, and 2A from Vin.

Onboard regulators take the USB or DC power and linearly convert it to 3.3V and 5V:

3V - this is the output from the 3.3V regulator, it can supply 500mA peak

5V - this is the output from the 5V regulator (when DC jack is used), or from USB. It can supply ~500mA peak from USB and ~800mA peak from DC

GND - this is the common ground for all power and logic

Vin - this is the higher of the DC jack or USB voltage. So if the DC jack is plugged in and 9V, Vin is 9V. If only USB connected, this will be 5V.

There is also an on/off switch. This switch is only for the DC jack and does not affect powering via USB

Logic pins

This is the general purpose I/O pin set for the microcontroller. All logic is 3.3VMost pins can do PWM outputAll pins can be interrupt inputs

Top Row

#2 through #12 - These are general purpose GPIO. If there's a dot next to the pad it can act as a PWM output.

#13 - GPIO #13 and is connected to the red LED marked L next to the USB jack

SDA - the I2C (Wire) data pin. There's no pull up on this pin by default so when using with I2C, you may need a 2.2K-10K pullup.

SCL - the I2C (Wire) clock pin. There's no pull up on this pin by default so when using with I2C, you may need a 2.2K-10K pullup.

Bottom Row

A0 - This pin is analog inputA0 but is also an analog output due to having a DAC (digital-to-analog converter). You can set the raw voltage to anything from 0 to 3.3V, unlike PWM outputs this is a true analog output

A1 thru A5 - These are each analog input as well as digital I/O pins.

Right side

SCK/MOSI/MISO - These are the hardware SPI pins, are are connected to the 2x3 header on the right hand side. you can use them as everyday GPIO pins (but recommend keeping them free as they are best used for hardware SPI connections for high speed.)

Additional analog inputs

In addition to the A0-A5 pins, there are extra analog inputs available

Digital #0 is also A6

Digital #1 is also A7

Digital #4 is also A8

Digital #5 is also A9

Digital #8 is also A10

Digital #9 is also A11

These pins are available in CircuitPython under the board module. Names that start with # are prefixed with D and other names are as is. So #0 / RX above is available as board.D0 and board.RX for example.

SPI Flash and NeoPixel

As part of the 'Express' series of boards, the Metro M0 Express is designed for use with CircuitPython. To make that easy, we have added two extra parts to this Metro M0: a mini NeoPixel (RGB LED) and a 2 MB SPI Flash chip

The NeoPixel is connected to pin #40 in Arduino, so just use our NeoPixel library and set it up as a single-LED strand on pin 40. In CircuitPython, the NeoPixel is board.NEOPIXEL and the library for it is here and in the bundle. The NeoPixel is powered by the 3.3V power supply but that hasn't shown to make a big difference in brightness or color. The NeoPixel is also used by the bootloader to let you know if the device has enumerated correctly (green) or USB failure (red). In CircuitPython, the LED is used to indicate the runtime status.

The SPI Flash is connected to 4 pins that are not brought out on the GPIO pads. This way you don't have to worry about the SPI flash colliding with other devices on the main SPI connection. Under Arduino, the FLASH SCK pin is #38, MISO is #36, MOSI is #37, and CS is #39. If you use Metro M0 Express as your board type, you'll be able to access the Flash SPI port under SPI1 - this is a fully new hardware SPI device separate from the GPIO pins on the outside edge of the Feather. In CircuitPython, the SPI flash is used natively by the interpretter and is read-only to user code, instead the Flash just shows up as the writeable disk drive!

Other Pins!

RST - this is the Reset pin, tie to ground to manually reset the ATSAMD21, as well as launch the bootloader manually

ARef - the analog reference pin. Normally the reference voltage is the same as the chip logic voltage (3.3V) but if you need an alternative analog reference, connect it to this pin and select the external AREF in your firmware. Can't go higher than 3.3V!

Debug Interface

If you'd like to do more advanced development, trace-debugging, or not use the bootloader, we have the SWD interface exposed.

You can use any 2x5 0.05" pitch SWD interface to connect. We suggest a J-Link. Since the SWCLK pin is shared between the NeoPixel, and the bootloader takes control of the pin, you need to reset the board right before beginning debug. OpenOCD and some other debug interfaces may not be able to do this. That's why we really really suggest a JLink!

UF2 Bootloader Details

This is an information page for advanced users who are curious how we get code from your computer into your Express board!

Adafruit Express and Gemma/Trinket M0 boards feature an improved bootloader that makes it easier than ever to flash different code onto the microcontroller. This bootloader makes it easy to switch between Microsoft MakeCode, CircuitPython and Arduino.

Instead of needing drivers or a separate program for flashing (say, bossac, jlink or avrdude), one can simply drag a file onto a removable drive.

The format of the file is a little special. Due to 'operating system woes' you cannot just drag a binary or hex file (trust us, we tried it, it isn't cross-platform compatible). Instead, the format of the file has extra information to help the bootloader know where the data goes. The format is called UF2 (USB Flashing Format). Microsoft MakeCode generates UF2s for flashing and CircuitPython releases are also available as UF2. You can also create your own UF2s from binary files using uf2tool, available here.

The bootloader is also BOSSA compatible, so it can be used with the Arduino IDE which expects a BOSSA bootloader on ATSAMD-based boards

The bootloader is not needed when changing your CircuitPython code. Its only needed when upgrading the CircuitPython core or changing between CircuitPython, Arduino and Microsoft MakeCode.

Entering Bootloader Mode

The first step to loading new code onto your board is triggering the bootloader. It is easily done by double tapping the reset button. Once the bootloader is active you will see the small red LED fade in and out and a new drive will appear on your computer with a name ending in BOOT. For example, feathers show up as FEATHERBOOT, while the new CircuitPlayground shows up as CPLAYBOOT, Trinket M0 will show up as TRINKETBOOT, and Gemma M0 will show up as GEMMABOOT

Furthermore, when the bootloader is active, it will change the color of one or more onboard neopixels to indicate the connection status, red for disconnected and green for connected. If the board is plugged in but still showing that its disconnected, try a different USB cable. Some cables only provide power with no communication.

For example, here is a Feather M0 Express running a colorful Neopixel swirl. When the reset button is double clicked (about half second between each click) the NeoPixel will stay green to let you know the bootloader is active. When the reset button is clicked once, the 'user program' (NeoPixel color swirl) restarts.

Once the bootloader is running, check your computer. You should see a USB Disk drive...

Once the bootloader is successfully connected you can open the drive and browse the virtual filesystem. This isn't the same filesystem as you use with CircuitPython or Arduino. It should have three files:

CURRENT.UF2 - The current contents of the microcontroller flash.

INDEX.HTM - Links to Microsoft MakeCode.

INFO_UF2.TXT - Includes bootloader version info. Please include it on bug reports.

Using the Mass Storage Bootloader

To flash something new, simply drag any UF2 onto the drive. After the file is finished copying, the bootloader will automatically restart. This usually causes a warning about an unsafe eject of the drive. However, its not a problem. The bootloader knows when everything is copied successfully.

You may get an alert from the OS that the file is being copied without it's properties. You can just click Yes

You may also get get a complaint that the drive was ejected without warning. Don't worry about this. The drive only ejects once the bootloader has verified and completed the process of writing the new code

Using the BOSSA Bootloader

As mentioned before, the bootloader is also compatible with BOSSA, which is the standard method of updating boards when in the Arduino IDE. It is a command-line tool that can be used in any operating system. We won't cover the full use of the bossac tool, suffice to say it can do quite a bit! More information is available at ShumaTech.

Windows 7 Drivers

If you are running Windows 7 (or, goodness, something earlier?) You will need a Serial Port driver file. Windows 10 users do not need this so skip this step.

Download and run the installer. We recommend just selecting all the serial port drivers available (no harm to do so) and installing them.

Verifying Serial Port in Device Manager

If you're running Windows, its a good idea to verify the device showed up. Open your Device Manager from the control panel and look under Ports (COM & LPT) for a device called Feather M0 or Circuit Playground or whatever!

If you see something like this, it means you did not install the drivers. Go back and try again, then remove and re-plug the USB cable for your board

Running bossac on the command line

If you are using the Arduino IDE, this step is not required. But sometimes you want to read/write custom binary files, say for loading CircuitPython or your own code. We recommend using bossac v 1.7.0 (or greater), which has been tested. The Arduino branch is most recommended.

You can download the latest builds here. The mingw32 version is for Windows, apple-darwin for Mac OSX and various linux options for Linux. Once downloaded, extract the files from the zip and open the command line to the directory with bossac

This will -erase the chip, -write the given file, -verify the write and -Reset the board. After reset, CircuitPython should be running. Express boards may cause a warning of an early eject of a USB drive but just ignore it. Nothing important was being written to the drive. A hard power-reset is also recommended after bossac, just in case.

Updating the bootloader

The UF2 bootloader is a new bootloader, and while we've done a ton of testing, it may contain bugs. Usually these bugs effect reliability rather than fully preventing the bootloader from working. If the bootloader is flaky then you can try updating the bootloader itself to potentially improve reliability.

Updating the bootloader is as easy as flashing CircuitPython, Arduino or MakeCode. Simply enter the bootloader as above and then drag the update bootloader uf2 file below. This uf2 contains a program which will unlock the bootloader section, update the bootloader, and re-lock it. It will overwrite your existing code such as CircuitPython or Arduino so make sure everything is backed up!

After the file is copied over, the bootloader will be updated and appear again. The INFO_UF2.TXT file should show the newer version number inside.

Getting Rid of Windows Pop-ups

If you do a lot of development on Windows with the UF2 bootloader, you may get annoyed by the constant "Hey you inserted a drive what do you want to do" pop-ups.

Go to the Control Panel. Click on the Hardware and Sound header

Click on the Autoplay header

Uncheck the box at the top, labeled Use Autoplay for all devices

Making your own UF2

Making your own UF2 is easy! All you need is a .bin file of a program you wish to flash and the Python conversion script. Make sure that your program was compiled to start at 0x2000 (8k) because the bootloader takes the first 8k. CircuitPython's linker script is an example on how to do that.

Once you have a .bin file, you simply need to run the Python conversion script over it. Here is an example from the directory with uf2conv.py:

Arduino IDE Setup

After you have downloaded and installed the latest version of Arduino IDE, you will need to start the IDE and navigate to the Preferences menu. You can access it from the File menu in Windows or Linux, or the Arduino menu on OS X.

A dialog will pop up just like the one shown below.

We will be adding a URL to the new Additional Boards Manager URLs option. The list of URLs is comma separated, and you will only have to add each URL once. New Adafruit boards and updates to existing boards will automatically be picked up by the Board Manager each time it is opened. The URLs point to index files that the Board Manager uses to build the list of available & installed boards.

To find the most up to date list of URLs you can add, you can visit the list of third party board URLs on the Arduino IDE wiki. We will only need to add one URL to the IDE in this example, but you can add multiple URLS by separating them with commas. Copy and paste the link below into the Additional Boards Manager URLs option in the Arduino IDE preferences.

Using with Arduino IDE

Since the Feather/Metro/Gemma/Trinket M0 use an ATSAMD21 chip running at 48 MHz, you can pretty easily get it working with the Arduino IDE. Most libraries (including the popular ones like NeoPixels and display) will work with the M0, especially devices & sensors that use i2c or SPI.

Now that you have added the appropriate URLs to the Arduino IDE preferences in the previous page, you can open the Boards Manager by navigating to the Tools->Board menu.

Once the Board Manager opens, click on the category drop down menu on the top left hand side of the window and select Contributed. You will then be able to select and install the boards supplied by the URLs added to the prefrences.

Install SAMD Support

First up, install the Arduino SAMD Boards version 1.6.15 or later

You can type Arduino SAMD in the top search bar, then when you see the entry, click Install

Install Adafruit SAMD

Next you can install the Adafruit SAMD package to add the board file definitions

You can type Adafruit SAMD in the top search bar, then when you see the entry, click Install

Even though in theory you don't need to - I recommend rebooting the IDE

Quit and reopen the Arduino IDE to ensure that all of the boards are properly installed. You should now be able to select and upload to the new boards listed in the Tools->Board menu.

Install Drivers (Windows 7 Only)

Run the installer! Since we bundle the SiLabs and FTDI drivers as well, you'll need to click through the license

Select which drivers you want to install, the defaults will set you up with just about every Adafruit board!

Click Install to do the installin'

Blink

Now you can upload your first blink sketch!

Plug in the Gemma M0, Trinket M0, Metro M0 or Feather M0 and wait for it to be recognized by the OS (just takes a few seconds). It will create a serial/COM port, you can now select it from the dropdown, it'll even be 'indicated' as Trinket/Gemma/Metro/Feather M0!

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000); // wait for a second
}

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000); // wait for a second
}

And click upload! That's it, you will be able to see the LED blink rate change as you adapt the delay() calls.

If you are having issues, make sure you selected the matching Board in the menu that matches the hardware you have in your hand.

Sucessful Upload

If you have a successful upload, you'll get a bunch of red text that tells you that the device was found and it was programmed, verified & reset

Compilation Issues

If you get an alert that looks like

Cannot run program "{runtime.tools.arm-none-eabi-gcc.path}\bin\arm-non-eabi-g++"

Make sure you have installed the Arduino SAMD boards package, you need both Arduino & Adafruit SAMD board packages

Manually bootloading

If you ever get in a 'weird' spot with the bootloader, or you have uploaded code that crashes and doesn't auto-reboot into the bootloader, click the RST button twice (like a double-click)to get back into the bootloader.

The red LED will pulse, so you know that its in bootloader mode.

Once it is in bootloader mode, you can select the newly created COM/Serial port and re-try uploading.

You may need to go back and reselect the 'normal' USB serial port next time you want to use the normal upload.

Ubuntu & Linux Issue Fix

Note if you're using Ubuntu 15.04 (or perhaps other more recent Linux distributions) there is an issue with the modem manager service which causes the Bluefruit LE micro to be difficult to program. If you run into errors like "device or resource busy", "bad file descriptor", or "port is busy" when attempting to program then you are hitting this issue.

Adapting Sketches to M0

The ATSAMD21 is a very nice little chip but its fairly new as Arduino-compatible cores go. Most sketches & libraries will work but here's a few things we noticed!

The below note are for all M0 boards, but not all may apply (e.g. Trinket and Gemma M0 do not have ARef so you can skip the Analog References note!)

Analog References

If you'd like to use the ARef pin for a non-3.3V analog reference, the code to use is analogReference(AR_EXTERNAL) (it's AR_EXTERNAL not EXTERNAL)

Pin Outputs & Pullups

The old-style way of turning on a pin as an input with a pullup is to use

pinMode(pin, INPUT)digitalWrite(pin, HIGH)

This is because the pullup-selection register is the same as the output-selection register.

For the M0, you can't do this anymore! Instead, use

pinMode(pin, INPUT_PULLUP)

which has the benefit of being backwards compatible with AVR.

Serial vs SerialUSB

99.9% of your existing Arduino sketches use Serial.print to debug and give output. For the Official Arduino SAMD/M0 core, this goes to the Serial5 port, which isn't exposed on the Feather. The USB port for the Official Arduino M0 core, is called SerialUSB instead.

In the Adafruit M0 Core, we fixed it so that Serial goes to USB when you use a Feather M0 so it will automatically work just fine.

However, on the off chance you are using the official Arduino SAMD core not the Adafruit version (which really, we recommend you use our version because as you can see it can vary) & you want your Serial prints and reads to use the USB port, use SerialUSB instead of Serial in your sketch

If you have existing sketches and code and you want them to work with the M0 without a huge find-replace, put

AnalogWrite / PWM on Feather/Metro M0

After looking through the SAMD21 datasheet, we've found that some of the options listed in the multiplexer table don't exist on the specific chip used in the Feather M0.

For all SAMD21 chips, there are two peripherals that can generate PWM signals: The Timer/Counter (TC) and Timer/Counter for Control Applications (TCC). Each SAMD21 has multiple copies of each, called 'instances'.

Each TC instance has one count register, one control register, and two output channels. Either channel can be enabled and disabled, and either channel can be inverted. The pins connected to a TC instance can output identical versions of the same PWM waveform, or complementary waveforms.

Each TCC instance has a single count register, but multiple compare registers and output channels. There are options for different kinds of waveform, interleaved switching, programmable dead time, and so on.

The biggest members of the SAMD21 family have five TC instances with two 'waveform output' (WO) channels, and three TCC instances with eight WO channels:

TC[0-4],WO[0-1]

TCC[0-2],WO[0-7]

And those are the ones shown in the datasheet's multiplexer tables.

The SAMD21G used in the Feather M0 only has three TC instances with two output channels, and three TCC instances with eight output channels:

TC[3-5],WO[0-1]

TCC[0-2],WO[0-7]

Tracing the signals to the pins broken out on the Feather M0, the following pins can't do PWM at all:

Analog pin A5

The following pins can be configured for PWM without any signal conflicts as long as the SPI, I2C, and UART pins keep their protocol functions:

Digital pins 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Analog pins A3 and A4

If only the SPI pins keep their protocol functions, you can also do PWM on the following pins:

TX and SDA (Digital pins 1 and 20)

analogWrite() PWM range

On AVR, if you set a pin's PWM with analogWrite(pin, 255) it will turn the pin fully HIGH. On the ARM cortex, it will set it to be 255/256 so there will be very slim but still-existing pulses-to-0V. If you need the pin to be fully on, add test code that checks if you are trying to analogWrite(pin, 255) and, instead, does a digitalWrite(pin, HIGH)

Missing header files

there might be code that uses libraries that are not supported by the M0 core. For example if you have a line with

The above will also make sure that header file isn't included for other architectures

If the #include is in the arduino sketch itself, you can try just removing the line.

Bootloader Launching

For most other AVRs, clicking reset while plugged into USB will launch the bootloader manually, the bootloader will time out after a few seconds. For the M0, you'll need to double click the button. You will see a pulsing red LED to let you know you're in bootloader mode. Once in that mode, it wont time out! Click reset again if you want to go back to launching code

Aligned Memory Access

This is a little less likely to happen to you but it happened to me! If you're used to 8-bit platforms, you can do this nice thing where you can typecast variables around. e.g.

uint8_t mybuffer[4];float f = (float)mybuffer;

You can't be guaranteed that this will work on a 32-bit platform because mybuffer might not be aligned to a 2 or 4-byte boundary. The ARM Cortex-M0 can only directly access data on 16-bit boundaries (every 2 or 4 bytes). Trying to access an odd-boundary byte (on a 1 or 3 byte location) will cause a Hard Fault and stop the MCU. Thankfully, there's an easy work around ... just use memcpy!

uint8_t mybuffer[4];float f;memcpy(f, mybuffer, 4)

Floating Point Conversion

Like the AVR Arduinos, the M0 library does not have full support for converting floating point numbers to ASCII strings. Functions like sprintf will not convert floating point. Fortunately, the standard AVR-LIBC library includes the dtostrf function which can handle the conversion for you.

Unfortunately, the M0 run-time library does not have dtostrf. You may see some references to using #include <avr/dtostrf.h> to get dtostrf in your code. And while it will compile, it does not work.

Instead, check out this thread to find a working dtostrf function you can include in your code:

Storing data in FLASH

If you're used to AVR, you've probably used PROGMEM to let the compiler know you'd like to put a variable or string in flash memory to save on RAM. On the ARM, its a little easier, simply add const before the variable name:

const char str[] = "My very long string";

That string is now in FLASH. You can manipulate the string just like RAM data, the compiler will automatically read from FLASH so you dont need special progmem-knowledgeable functions.

You can verify where data is stored by printing out the address:Serial.print("Address of str $"); Serial.println((int)&str, HEX);

If the address is $2000000 or larger, its in SRAM. If the address is between $0000 and $3FFFF Then it is in FLASH

Using SPI Flash

One of the best features of the M0 express board is a small SPI flash memory chip built into the board. This memory can be used for almost any purpose like storing data files, Python code, and more. Think of it like a little SD card that is always connected to the board, and in fact with Arduino you can access the memory using a library that is very similar to the Arduino SD card library. You can even read and write files that CircuitPython stores on the flash chip!

Once the library is installed open the Arduino IDE and look for the following examples in the library:

fatfs_circuitpython

fatfs_datalogging

fatfs_format

fatfs_full_usage

fatfs_print_file

flash_erase

These examples allow you to format the flash memory with a FAT filesystem (the same kind of filesystem used on SD cards) and read and write files to it just like a SD card.

Read & Write CircuitPython Files

The fatfs_circuitpython example shows how to read and write files on the flash chip so that they're accessible from CircuitPython. This means you can run a CircuitPython program on your board and have it store data, then run an Arduino sketch that uses this library to interact with the same data.

Note that before you use the fatfs_circuitpython example you must have loaded CircuitPython on your board. Load the latest version of CircuitPython as explained in this guide first to ensure a CircuitPython filesystem is initialized and written to the flash chip. Once you've loaded CircuitPython then you can run the fatfs_circuitpython example sketch.

To run the sketch load it in the Arduino IDE and upload it to the Feather M0 board. Then open the serial monitor at 115200 baud. You should see the serial monitor display messages as it attempts to read files and write to a file on the flash chip. Specifically the example will look for a boot.py and main.py file (like what CircuitPython runs when it starts) and print out their contents. Then it will add a line to the end of a data.txt file on the board (creating it if it doesn't exist already). After running the sketch you can reload CircuitPython on the board and open the data.txt file to read it from CircuitPython!

To understand how to read & write files that are compatible with CircuitPython let's examine the sketch code. First notice an instance of the Adafruit_M0_Express_CircuitPython class is created and passed an instance of the flash chip class in the last line below:

By using this Adafruit_M0_Express_CircuitPython class you'll get a filesystem object that is compatible with reading and writing files on a CircuitPython-formatted flash chip. This is very important for interoperability between CircuitPython and Arduino as CircuitPython has specialized partitioning and flash memory layout that isn't compatible with simpler uses of the library (shown in the other examples).

Once an instance of the Adafruit_M0_Express_CircuitPython class is created (called pythonfs in this sketch) you can go on to interact with it just like if it were the SD card library in Arduino. You can open files for reading & writing, create directories, delete files and directories and more. Here's how the sketch checks if a boot.py file exists and prints it out a character at a time:

Notice the exists function is called to check if the boot.py file is found, and then the open function is used to open it in read mode. Once a file is opened you'll get a reference to a File class object which you can read and write from as if it were a Serial device (again just like the SD card library, all of the same File class functions are available). In this case the available function will return the number of bytes left to read in the file, and the read function will read a character at a time to print it to the serial monitor.

Writing a file is just as easy, here's how the sketch writes to data.txt:

// Create or append to a data.txt file and add a new line
// to the end of it. CircuitPython code can later open and
// see this file too!
File data = pythonfs.open("data.txt", FILE_WRITE);
if (data) {
// Write a new line to the file:
data.println("Hello CircuitPython from Arduino!");
data.close();
// See the other fatfs examples like fatfs_full_usage and fatfs_datalogging
// for more examples of interacting with files.
Serial.println("Wrote a new line to the end of data.txt!");
}
else {
Serial.println("Error, failed to open data file for writing!");
}

// Create or append to a data.txt file and add a new line
// to the end of it. CircuitPython code can later open and
// see this file too!
File data = pythonfs.open("data.txt", FILE_WRITE);
if (data) {
// Write a new line to the file:
data.println("Hello CircuitPython from Arduino!");
data.close();
// See the other fatfs examples like fatfs_full_usage and fatfs_datalogging
// for more examples of interacting with files.
Serial.println("Wrote a new line to the end of data.txt!");
}
else {
Serial.println("Error, failed to open data file for writing!");
}

Again the open function is used but this time it's told to open the file for writing. In this mode the file will be opened for appending (i.e. data added to the end of it) if it exists, or it will be created if it doesn't exist. Once the file is open print functions like print and println can be used to write data to the file (just like writing to the serial monitor). Be sure to close the file when finished writing!

That's all there is to basic file reading and writing. Check out the fatfs_full_usage example for examples of even more functions like creating directories, deleting files & directories, checking the size of files, and more! Remember though to interact with CircuitPython files you need to use the Adafruit_Feather_M0_CircuitPython class as shown in the fatfs_circuitpython example above!

Format Flash Memory

The fatfs_format example will format the SPI flash with a new blank filesystem. Be warned this sketch will delete all data on the flash memory, including any Python code or other data you might have stored! The format sketch is useful if you'd like to wipe everything away and start fresh, or to help get back in a good state if the memory should get corrupted for some reason.

Be aware too the fatfs_format and examples below are not compatible with a CircuitPython-formatted flash chip! If you need to share data between Arduino & CircuitPython check out the fatfs_circuitpython example above.

To run the format sketch load it in the Arduino IDE and upload it to the Feather M0 board. Then open the serial monitor at 115200 baud. You should see the serial monitor display a message asking you to confirm formatting the flash. If you don't see this message then close the serial monitor, press the board's reset button, and open the serial monitor again.

Type OK and press enter in the serial monitor input to confirm that you'd like to format the flash memory. You need to enter OK in all capital letters!

Once confirmed the sketch will format the flash memory. The format process takes about a minute so be patient as the data is erased and formatted. You should see a message printed once the format process is complete. At this point the flash chip will be ready to use with a brand new empty filesystem.

Datalogging Example

One handy use of the SPI flash is to store data, like datalogging sensor readings. The fatfs_datalogging example shows basic file writing/datalogging. Open the example in the Arduino IDE and upload it to your Feather M0 board. Then open the serial monitor at 115200 baud. You should see a message printed every minute as the sketch writes a new line of data to a file on the flash filesystem.

To understand how to write to a file look in the loop function of the sketch:

// Open the datalogging file for writing. The FILE_WRITE mode will open
// the file for appending, i.e. it will add new data to the end of the file.
File dataFile = fatfs.open(FILE_NAME, FILE_WRITE);
// Check that the file opened successfully and write a line to it.
if (dataFile) {
// Take a new data reading from a sensor, etc. For this example just
// make up a random number.
int reading = random(0,100);
// Write a line to the file. You can use all the same print functions
// as if you're writing to the serial monitor. For example to write
// two CSV (commas separated) values:
dataFile.print("Sensor #1");
dataFile.print(",");
dataFile.print(reading, DEC);
dataFile.println();
// Finally close the file when done writing. This is smart to do to make
// sure all the data is written to the file.
dataFile.close();
Serial.println("Wrote new measurement to data file!");
}

// Open the datalogging file for writing. The FILE_WRITE mode will open
// the file for appending, i.e. it will add new data to the end of the file.
File dataFile = fatfs.open(FILE_NAME, FILE_WRITE);
// Check that the file opened successfully and write a line to it.
if (dataFile) {
// Take a new data reading from a sensor, etc. For this example just
// make up a random number.
int reading = random(0,100);
// Write a line to the file. You can use all the same print functions
// as if you're writing to the serial monitor. For example to write
// two CSV (commas separated) values:
dataFile.print("Sensor #1");
dataFile.print(",");
dataFile.print(reading, DEC);
dataFile.println();
// Finally close the file when done writing. This is smart to do to make
// sure all the data is written to the file.
dataFile.close();
Serial.println("Wrote new measurement to data file!");
}

Just like using the Arduino SD card library you create a File object by calling an open function and pointing it at the name of the file and how you'd like to open it (FILE_WRITE mode, i.e. writing new data to the end of the file). Notice however instead of calling open on a global SD card object you're calling it on a fatfs object created earlier in the sketch (look at the top after the #define configuration values).

Once the file is opened it's simply a matter of calling print and println functions on the file object to write data inside of it. This is just like writing data to the serial monitor and you can print out text, numeric, and other types of data. Be sure to close the file when you're done writing to ensure the data is stored correctly!

Reading and Printing Files

The fatfs_print_file example will open a file (by default the data.csv file created by running the fatfs_datalogging example above) and print all of its contents to the serial monitor. Open the fatfs_print_file example and load it on your Feather M0 board, then open the serial monitor at 115200 baud. You should see the sketch print out the contents of data.csv (if you don't have a file called data.csv on the flash look at running the datalogging example above first).

To understand how to read data from a file look in the setup function of the sketch:

// Open the file for reading and check that it was successfully opened.
// The FILE_READ mode will open the file for reading.
File dataFile = fatfs.open(FILE_NAME, FILE_READ);
if (dataFile) {
// File was opened, now print out data character by character until at the
// end of the file.
Serial.println("Opened file, printing contents below:");
while (dataFile.available()) {
// Use the read function to read the next character.
// You can alternatively use other functions like readUntil, readString, etc.
// See the fatfs_full_usage example for more details.
char c = dataFile.read();
Serial.print(c);
}
}

// Open the file for reading and check that it was successfully opened.
// The FILE_READ mode will open the file for reading.
File dataFile = fatfs.open(FILE_NAME, FILE_READ);
if (dataFile) {
// File was opened, now print out data character by character until at the
// end of the file.
Serial.println("Opened file, printing contents below:");
while (dataFile.available()) {
// Use the read function to read the next character.
// You can alternatively use other functions like readUntil, readString, etc.
// See the fatfs_full_usage example for more details.
char c = dataFile.read();
Serial.print(c);
}
}

Just like when writing data with the datalogging example you create a File object by calling the open function on a fatfs object. This time however you pass a file mode of FILE_READ which tells the filesystem you want to read data.

After you open a file for reading you can easily check if data is available by calling the available function on the file, and then read a single character with the read function. This makes it easy to loop through all of the data in a file by checking if it's available and reading a character at a time. However there are more advanced read functions you can use too--see the fatfs_full_usage example or even the Arduino SD library documentation (the SPI flash library implements the same functions).

Full Usage Example

For a more complete demonstration of reading and writing files look at the fatfs_full_usage example. This examples uses every function in the library and demonstrates things like checking for the existence of a file, creating directories, deleting files, deleting directories, and more.

Remember the SPI flash library is built to have the same functions and interface as the Arduino SD library so if you have code or examples that store data on a SD card they should be easy to adapt to use the SPI flash library, just create a fatfs object like in the examples above and use its open function instead of the global SD object's open function. Once you have a reference to a file all of the functions and usage should be the same between the SPI flash and SD libraries!

Accessing SPI Flash

Arduino doesn't have the ability to show up as a 'mass storage' disk drive. So instead we must use CircuitPython to do that part for us. Here's the full technique:

Start the bootloader on the Express board. Drag over the latest circuitpython uf2 file

After a moment, you should see a CIRCUITPY drive appear on your hard drive with boot_out.txt on it

Now go to Arduino and upload the fatfs_circuitpython example sketch from the Adafruit SPI library. Open the serial console. It will successfully mount the filesystem and write a new line to data.txt

Back on your computer, re-start the Express board bootloader, and re-drag circuitpython.uf2 onto the BOOT drive to reinstall circuitpython

Check the CIRCUITPY drive, you should now see data.txt which you can open to read!

Once you have your Arduino sketch working well, for datalogging, you can simplify this procedure by dragging CURRENT.UF2 off of the BOOT drive to make a backup of the current program before loading circuitpython on. Then once you've accessed the file you want, re-drag CURRENT.UF2 back onto the BOOT drive to re-install the Arduino sketch!

Metro M0 HELP!

My Metro M0 stopped working when I unplugged the USB!

A lot of our example sketches have a

while (!Serial);

line in setup(), to keep the board waiting until the USB is opened. This makes it a lot easier to debug a program because you get to see all the USB data output. If you want to run your Metro M0 without USB connectivity, delete or comment out that line

My Metro never shows up as a COM or Serial port in the Arduino IDE

Avast number of Metro 'failures' are due to charge-only USB cables

We get upwards of 5 complaints a day that turn out to be due to charge-only cables!

Use only a cable that you know is for data syncing

If you have any charge-only cables, cut them in half throw them out. We are serious! They tend to be low quality in general, and will only confuse you and others later, just get a good data+charge USB cable

Ack! I "did something" and now when I plug in the Metro, it doesn't show up as a device anymore so I cant upload to it or fix it...

No problem! You can 'repair' a bad code upload easily. Note that this can happen if you set a watchdog timer or sleep mode that stops USB, or any sketch that 'crashes' your Metro

Turn on verbose upload in the Arduino IDE preferences

Plug in Metro M0, it won't show up as a COM/serial port that's ok

Open up the Blink example (Examples->Basics->Blink)

Select the correct board in the Tools menu, e.g. Metro M0 (check your board to make sure you have the right one selected!)

Compile it (make sure that works)

Click Upload to attempt to upload the code

The IDE will print out a bunch of COM Ports as it tries to upload. During this time, double-click the reset button, you'll see the red pulsing LED and the NeoPixel will be green that tells you its now in bootloading mode

The Metro will show up as the Bootloader COM/Serial port

The IDE should see the bootloader COM/Serial port and upload properly

I can't get the Metro USB device to show up - I get "USB Device Malfunctioning" errors!

This seems to happen when people select the wrong board from the Arduino Boards menu.

If you have a Metro M0 (look on the board to read what it is you have) Make sure you select Metro M0 - do not use Feather M0 or Arduino Zero

I'm having problems with COM ports and my Metro M0

Theres two COM ports you can have with the M0, one is the user port and one is the bootloader port. They are not the same COM port number!

When you upload a new user program it will come up with a user com port, particularly if you use Serial in your user program.

If you crash your user program, or have a program that halts or otherwise fails, the user com port can disappear.

When the user COM port disappears, Arduino will not be able to automatically start the bootloader and upload new software.

So you will need to help it by performing the click-during upload procedure to re-start the bootloader, and upload something that is known working like "Blink"

I don't understand why the COM port disappears, this does not happen on my Arduino UNO!

UNO-type Arduinos have a seperate serial port chip (aka "FTDI chip" or "Prolific PL2303" etc etc) which handles all serial port capability seperately than the main chip. This way if the main chip fails, you can always use the COM port.

M0 and 32u4-based Arduinos do not have a seperate chip, instead the main processor performs this task for you. It allows for a lower cost, higher power setup...but requires a little more effort since you will need to 'kick' into the bootloader manually once in a while

I'm trying to upload to my Metro and i get this error "avrdude: ser_recv(): programmer is not responding"

What is CircuitPython?

CircuitPython is a programming language designed to simplify experimenting and learning to program on low-cost microcontroller boards. It makes getting started easier than ever with no upfront desktop downloads needed. Once you get your board set up, open any text editor, and get started editing code. It's that simple.

CircuitPython is based on Python

Python is the fastest growing programming language. It's taught in schools and universities. It's a high-level programming language which means it's designed to be easier to read, write and maintain. It supports modules and packages which means it's easy to reuse your code for other projects. It has a built in interpreter which means there are no extra steps, like compiling, to get your code to work. And of course, Python is Open Source Software which means it's free for anyone to use, modify or improve upon.

CircuitPython adds hardware support to all of these amazing features. If you already have Python knowledge, you can easily apply that to using CircuitPython. If you have no previous experience, it's really simple to get started!

Why would I use CircuitPython?

CircuitPython is designed to run on microcontroller boards. A microcontroller board is a board with a microcontroller chip that's essentially an itty-bitty all-in-one computer. The board you're holding is a microcontroller board! CircuitPython is easy to use because all you need is that little board, a USB cable, and a computer with a USB connection. But that's only the beginning.

Other reasons to use CircuitPython include:

You want to get up and running quickly. Create a file, edit your code, save the file, and it runs immediately. There is no compiling, no downloading and no uploading needed.

You're new to programming. CircuitPython is designed with education in mind. It's easy to start learning how to program and you get immediate feedback from the board.

Easily update your code. Since your code lives on the disk drive, you can edit it whenever you like, you can also keep multiple files around for easy experimentation.

The serial console and REPL. These allow for live feedback from your code and interactive programming.

File storage. The internal storage for CircuitPython makes it great for data-logging, playing audio clips, and otherwise interacting with files.

Strong hardware support. There are many libraries and drivers for sensors, breakout boards and other external components.

This is just the beginning. CircuitPython continues to evolve, and is constantly being updated. We welcome and encourage feedback from the community, and we incorporate this into how we are developing CircuitPython. That's the core of the open source concept. This makes CircuitPython better for you and everyone who uses it!

CircuitPython

CircuitPython is a derivative of MicroPython designed to simplify experimentation and education on low-cost microcontrollers. It makes it easier than ever to get prototyping by requiring no upfront desktop software downloads. Simply copy and edit files on the CIRCUITPY drive to iterate.

Your Metro M0 Express might already come with CircuitPython but maybe there's a new version, or you loaded your Metro M0 Express with Arduino code! In that case, see the below for how to reinstall or update CircuitPython. Otherwise you can skip this and go straight to the next page.

If you've already plugged your board into your computer, you should see a drive called CIRCUITPY. The drive will contain a few files.

If you have already plugged in your board, start by ejecting or "safely remove" the CIRCUITPY drive. This is a good practice to get into. Always eject before unplugging or resetting your board!

Further Information

Installing Mu Editor

Mu is a simple code editor that works with the Adafruit CircuitPython boards. It's written in Python and works on Windows, MacOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi. The serial console is built right in so you get immediate feedback from your board's serial output!

Mu is our recommended editor - please use it (unless you are an experienced coder with a favorite editor already!)

Installing Mu for Windows or Mac OS X

Click the link above to download the latest version of Mu. If you are using Windows, you must be running Windows 7 or higher. For Mac OS X you must be running 10.11 (El Capitan) or higher (Mac users with lower versions can try the Linux instructions below, but YMMV)

Download and save the file to your desktop or wherever is handy.

Double-click the file to open Mu. You're ready to go!

Installing Mu for Linux

Each Linux distro is a little different, so use this as a guideline! These instructions will also work for Mac OS X, but you'll want to use brew instead of apt-get

Mu require python version 3. If you haven't installed python yet, do so via your command line using something like sudo apt-get install python3

Creating and Editing Code

One of the best things about CircuitPython is how simple it is to get code up and running. In this section, we're going to cover how to create and edit your first CircuitPython program.

To create and edit code, all you'll need is an editor. There are many options. We strongly recommend using Mu! It's designed for CircuitPython, and it's really simple and easy to use, with a built in serial console!

If you don't or can't use Mu, there are basic text editors built into every operating system such as Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac, and gedit on Linux. There are also excellent options available for download that are designed for editing code. Atom is a code editor that works on all three operating systems. There are many options for all operating systems.

Code editors have features that are specific to editing code, but any text editor will be fine.

Creating Code

Open your editor, and create a new file. If you are using Mu, click the New button in the top left

It will look like this - note that under the while True: line, the next four lines have spaces to indent them, but they're indented exactly the same amount. All other lines have no spaces before the text.

Save this file as code.py on your CIRCUITPY drive.

On each board you'll find a tiny red LED. It should now be blinking. Once per second

Congratulations, you've just run your first CircuitPython program!

Editing Code

To edit code, open the code.py file on your CIRCUITPY drive into your editor.

Make the desired changes to your code. Save the file. That's it!

Your code changes are run as soon as the file is done saving.

There's just one warning we have to give you before we continue...

Don't Click Reset or Unplug!

The CircuitPython code on your board detects when the files are changed or written and will automatically re-start your code. This makes coding very fast because you save, and it re-runs.

However, you must wait until the file is done being saved before unplugging or resetting your board!On Windows using some editors this can sometimes take up to90 seconds, on Linux it can take 30 seconds to complete because the text editor does not save the file completely. Mac OS does not seem to have this delay, which is nice!

This is really important to be aware of. If you unplug or reset the board before your computer finishes writing the file to your board, you can corrupt the drive. If this happens, you may lose the code you've written, so it's important to backup your code to your computer regularly.

There are a few ways to avoid this:

1. Use an editor that writes out the file completely when you save it.

Recommended editors:

mu is an editor that safely writes all changes (it's also our recommended editor!)

notepad (the default Windows editor) and Notepad++ can be slow to write, so we recommend the editors above! If you are using notepad, be sure to eject the drive (see below)

IDLE does not force out changes immediately

nano (on Linux) does not force out changes

Anything else - we haven't tested other editors so please use a recommended one!

2. Eject or Sync the Drive After Writing

If you are using one of our not-recommended-editors, not all is lost! You can still make it work.

On Windows, you can Eject or Safe Remove the CIRCUITPY drive. It won't actually eject, but it will force the operating system to save your file to disk. On Linux, use the sync command in a terminal to force the write to disk.

Oh No I Did Something Wrong and Now The CIRCUITPY Drive Doesn't Show Up!!!

Don't worry! Corrupting the drive isn't the end of the world (or your board!). If this happens, follow the steps found on the Troubleshooting page of every board guide to get your board up and running again.

Back to Editing Code...

Now! Let's try editing the program you added to your board. Open your code.py file into your editor. We'll make a simple change. Change the first 0.5 to 0.1. The code should look like this:

Imports & Libraries

Each CircuitPython program you run needs to have a lot of information to work. The reason CircuitPython is so simple to use is that most of that information is stored in other files and works in the background. These files are called libraries. Some of them are built into CircuitPython. Others are stored on your CIRCUITPY drive in a folder called lib.

The import statements tells the board that you're going to use a particular library in your code. In this example, we imported three libraries: board, digitalio, and time. All three of these libraries are built into CircuitPython, so no separate files are needed. That's one of the things that makes this an excellent first example. You don't need any thing extra to make it work! board gives you access to the hardware on your board, digitalio lets you access that hardware as inputs/outputs and time let's you pass time by 'sleeping'

Your board knows the red LED as D13. So, we initialise that pin, and we set it to output. We set led to equal the rest of that information so we don't have to type it all out again later in our code.

Loop-de-loops

The third section starts with a while statement. while True: essentially means, "forever do the following:". while True: creates a loop. Code will loop "while" the condition is "true" (vs. false), and as True is never False, the code will loop forever. All code that is indented under while True: is "inside" the loop.

First, we have led.value = True. This line tells the LED to turn on. On the next line, we have time.sleep(0.5). This line is telling CircuitPython to pause running code for 0.5 seconds. Since this is between turning the led on and off, the led will be on for 0.5 seconds.

The next two lines are similar. led.value = False tells the LED to turn off, and time.sleep(0.5) tells CircuitPython to pause for another 0.5 seconds. This occurs between turning the led off and back on so the LED will be off for 0.5 seconds too.

Then the loop will begin again, and continue to do so as long as the code is running!

So, when you changed the first 0.5 to 0.1, you decreased the amount of time that the code leaves the LED on. So it blinks on really quickly before turning off!

Great job! You've edited code in a CircuitPython program!

More Changes

We don't have to stop there! Let's keep going. Change the second 0.5 to 0.1 so it looks like this:

Now it blinks really fast! You decreased the both time that the code leaves the LED on and off!

Now try increasing both of the 0.1 to 1. Your LED will blink much more slowly because you've increased the amount of time that the LED is turned on and off.

Well done! You're doing great! You're ready to start into new examples and edit them to see what happens! These were simple changes, but major changes are done using the same process. Make your desired change, save it, and get the results. That's really all there is to it!

Naming Your Program File

CircuitPython looks for a code file on the board to run. There are four options: code.txt, code.py, main.txt and main.py. CircuitPython looks for those files, in that order, and then runs the first one it finds. While we suggest using code.py as your code file, it is important to know that the other options exist. If your program doesn't seem to be updating as you work, make sure you haven't created another code file that's being read instead of the one you're working on.

Connecting to the Serial Console

One of the staples of CircuitPython (and programming in general!) is something called a "print statement". This is a line you include in your code that causes your code to output text. A print statement in CircuitPython looks like this:

print("Hello, world!")

This line would result in:

Hello, world!

However, these print statements need somewhere to display. That's where the serial console comes in!

The serial console receives output from your CircuitPython board sent over USB and displays it so you can see it. This is necessary when you've included a print statement in your code and you'd like to see what you printed. It is also helpful for troubleshooting errors, because your board will send errors and the serial console will print those too.

The serial console requires a terminal program. A terminal is a program that gives you a text-based interface to perform various tasks.

Are you using Mu?

If so, good news! The serial console is built into Mu and will autodetect your board making using the REPL really really easy.

Please note that Mu does yet not work with nRF52 or ESP8266-based CircuitPython boards, skip down to the next section for details on using a terminal program.

Keep your serial console window where you can see it. Save your file. You'll see what the serial console displays when the board reboots. Then you'll see your new change!

The Traceback (most recent call last): is telling you the last thing your board was doing before you saved your file. This is normal behavior and will happen every time the board resets. This is really handy for troubleshooting. Let's introduce an error so we can see how it is used.

Delete the e at the end of True from the line led.value = True so that it says led.value = Tru

Save your file. You will notice that your red LED will stop blinking, and you may have a colored status LED blinking at you. This is because the code is no longer correct and can no longer run properly. We need to fix it!

Usually when you run into errors, it's not because you introduced them on purpose. You may have 200 lines of code, and have no idea where your error could be hiding. This is where the serial console can help. Let's take a look!

The Traceback (most recent call last): is telling you that the last thing it was able to run was line 10 in your code. The next line is your error: NameError: name 'Tru' is not defined. This error might not mean a lot to you, but combined with knowing the issue is on line 10, it gives you a great place to start!

Go back to your code, and take a look at line 10. Obviously, you know what the problem is already. But if you didn't, you'd want to look at line 10 and see if you could figure it out. If you're still unsure, try googling the error to get some help. In this case, you know what to look for. You spelled True wrong. Fix the typo and save your file.

The serial console will display any output generated by your code. Some sensors, such as a humidity sensor or a thermistor, receive data and you can use print statements to display that information. You can also use print statements for troubleshooting. If your code isn't working, and you want to know where it's failing, you can put print statements in various places to see where it stops printing.

The serial console has many uses, and is an amazing tool overall for learning and programming!

The REPL

The other feature of the serial connection is the Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop, or REPL. The REPL allows you to enter individual lines of code and have them run immediately. It's really handy if you're running into trouble with a particular program and can't figure out why. It's interactive so it's great for testing new ideas.

To use the REPL, you first need to be connected to the serial console. Once that connection has been established, you'll want to press Ctrl + C.

If there is code running, it will stop and you'll see Press any key to enter the REPL. Use CTRL-D to reload. Follow those instructions, and press any key on your keyboard.

The Traceback (most recent call last): is telling you the last thing your board was doing before you pressed Ctrl + C and interrupted it. The KeyboardInterrupt is you pressing Ctrl + C. This information can be handy when troubleshooting, but for now, don't worry about it. Just note that it is expected behavior.

If there is no code running, you will enter the REPL immediately after pressing Ctrl + C. There is no information about what your board was doing before you interrupted it because there is no code running.

Either way, once you press a key you'll see a >>> prompt welcoming you to the REPL!

If you have trouble getting to the >>> prompt, try pressing Ctrl + C a few more times.

The first thing you get from the REPL is information about your board.

This line tells you the version of CircuitPython you're using and when it was released. Next, it gives you the type of board you're using and the type of microcontroller the board uses. Each part of this may be different for your board depending on the versions you're working with.

This is followed by the CircuitPython prompt.

From this prompt you can run all sorts of commands and code. The first thing we'll do is run help(). This will tell us where to start exploring the REPL. To run code in the REPL, type it in next to the REPL prompt.

Type help() next to the prompt in the REPL.

Then press enter. You should then see a message.

First part of the message is another reference to the version of CircuitPython you're using. Second, a URL for the CircuitPython related project guides. Then... wait. What's this? To list built-in modules, please do `help("modules")`. Remember the libraries you learned about while going through creating code? That's exactly what this is talking about! This is a perfect place to start. Let's take a look!

Type help("modules") into the REPL next to the prompt, and press enter.

This is a list of all the core libraries built into CircuitPython. We discussed how board contains all of the pins on the board that you can use in your code. From the REPL, you are able to see that list!

Type import board into the REPL and press enter. It'll go to a new prompt. It might look like nothing happened, but that's not the case! If you recall, the import statement simply tells the code to expect to do something with that module. In this case, it's telling the REPL that you plan to do something with that module.

Next, type dir(board) into the REPL and press enter.

This is a list of all of the pins on your board that are available for you to use in your code. Each board's list will differ slightly depending on the number of pins available. Do you see D13? That's the pin you used to blink the red LED!

The REPL can also be used to run code. Be aware that any code you enter into the REPL isn't saved anywhere. If you're testing something new that you'd like to keep, make sure you have it saved somewhere on your computer as well!

Every programmer in every programming language starts with a piece of code that says, "Hello, World." We're going to say hello to something else. Type into the REPL:

print("Hello, CircuitPython!")

Then press enter.

That's all there is to running code in the REPL! Nice job!

You can write single lines of code that run stand-alone. You can also write entire programs into the REPL to test them. As we said though, remember that nothing typed into the REPL is saved.

There's a lot the REPL can do for you. It's great for testing new ideas if you want to see if a few new lines of code will work. It's fantastic for troubleshooting code by entering it one line at a time and finding out where it fails. It lets you see what libraries are available and explore those libraries.

Try typing more into the REPL to see what happens!

Returning to the serial console

When you're ready to leave the REPL and return to the serial console, simply press Ctrl + D. This will reload your board and reenter the serial console. You will restart the program you had running before entering the REPL. In the console window, you'll see any output from the program you had running. And if your program was affecting anything visual on the board, you'll see that start up again as well.

You can return to the REPL at any time!

CircuitPython Libraries

Each CircuitPython program you run needs to have a lot of information to work. The reason CircuitPython is so simple to use is that most of that information is stored in other files and works in the background. These files are called libraries. Some of them are built into CircuitPython. Others are stored on your CIRCUITPY drive in a folder called lib. Part of what makes CircuitPython so awesome is its ability to store code separately from the firmware itself. Storing code separately from the firmware makes it easier to update both the code you write and the libraries you depend.

Your board may ship with a lib folder already, its in the base directory of the drive. If not, simply create the folder yourself.

CircuitPython libraries work in the same was as regular Python modules so the Python docs are a great reference for how it all should work. In Python terms, we can place our library files in the lib directory because its part of the Python path by default.

One downside of this approach of separate libraries is that they are not built in. To use them, one needs to copy them to the CIRCUITPY drive before they can be used. Fortunately, we provide a bundle full of our libraries.

Our bundle and releases also feature optimized versions of the libraries with the .mpy file extension. These files take less space on the drive and have a smaller memory footprint as they are loaded.

Installing the CircuitPython Library Bundle

We're constantly updating and improving our libraries, so we don't (at this time) ship our CircuitPython boards with the full library bundle. Instead, you can find example code in the guides for your board that depends on external libraries. Some of these libraries may be available from us at Adafruit, some may be written by community members!

Either way, as you start to explore CircuitPython, you'll want to know how to get libraries on board.

You can grab the latest Adafruit CircuitPython 2.x Bundle release by clicking this button:

Either way, download the version that matches your CircuitPython run-time. For example, if you're running v2.2 download the v2 bundle. If you're running 3.0, download the v3 bundle. There's also a py bundle which contains the uncompressed python files, you probably don't want that!

After downloading the zip, extract its contents. This is usually done by double clicking on the zip. On Mac OSX, it places the file in the same directory as the zip.

When you open the folder, you'll see a large number of mpy files and folders

Express Boards

If you are using a Feather M0 Express, Metro M0 Express or Circuit Playground Express (or any other "Express" board) your CircuitPython board comes with at least 2 MB of Flash storage. This is plenty of space for all of our library files so we recommend you just install them all! (If you have a Gemma M0 or Trinket M0 or other non-Express board, skip down to the next section)

On Express boards, the lib directory can be copied directly to the CIRCUITPY drive.

Just drag the entire lib folder into the CIRCUITPY drive, and 'replace' any old files if your operating system prompts you

Non-Express Boards

If you are using Trinket M0 or Gemma M0, you will need to load the libraries individually, due to file space restrictions. If you are using a non-express board, or you would rather load libraries as you use them, you'll first want to create a lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive. Open the drive, right click, choose the option to create a new folder, and call it lib. Then, open the lib folder you extracted from the downloaded zip. Inside you'll find a number of folders and .mpy files. Find the library you'd like to use, and copy it to the lib folder on CIRCUITPY.

Example: ImportError Due to Missing Library

If you choose to load libraries as you need them, you may write up code that tries to use a library you haven't yet loaded. We're going to demonstrate what happens when you try to utilise a library that you don't have loaded on your board, and cover the steps required to resolve the issue. This demonstration will only return an error if you do not have the required library loaded into the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

We have an ImportError. It says there is no module named 'simpleio'. That's the one we just included in our code!

Click the link above to download the correct bundle. Extract the lib folder from the downloaded bundle file. Scroll down to find simpleio.mpy. This is the library file we're looking for! Follow the steps above to load an individual library file.

The LED starts blinking again! Let's check the serial console.

No errors! Excellent. You've successfully resolved an ImportError!

If you run into this error in the future, follow along with the steps above and choose the library that matches the one you're missing.

Library Install on Non-Express Boards

If you have a Trinket M0 or Gemma M0, you'll want to follow the same steps in the example above to install libraries as you need them. You don't always need to wait for an ImportError as you probably know what library you added to your code. Simply open the lib folder you downloaded, find the library you need, and drag it to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

For these boards, your internal storage is from the chip itself. So, these boards don't have enough space for all of the libraries. If you try to copy over the entire lib folder you won't have enough space on your CIRCUITPY drive.

You may end up running out of space on your Trinket M0 or Gemma M0 even if you only load libraries as you need them. There are a number of steps you can use to try to resolve this issue. You'll find them in the Troubleshooting page in the Learn guides for your board.

Updating CircuitPython Libraries

Libraries are updated from time to time, and it's important to update the files you have on your CIRCUITPY drive.

To update a single library, follow the same steps above. When you drag the library file to your lib folder, it will ask if you want to replace it. Say yes. That's it!

If you'd like to update the entire bundle at once, drag the lib folder to your CIRUCITPY drive. Different operating systems will have a different dialog pop up. You want to tell it to replace the current folder. Then you're updated and ready to go!

A new library bundle is released every time there's an update to a library. Updates include things like bug fixes and new features. It's important to check in every so often to see if the libraries you're using have been updated.

Welcome to the Community!

CircuitPython is a programming language that's super simple to get started with and great for learning. It runs on microcontrollers and works out of the box. You can plug it in and get started with any text editor. The best part? CircuitPython comes with an amazing, supportive community.

Everyone is welcome! CircuitPython is Open Source. This means it's available for anyone to use, edit, copy and improve upon. This also means CircuitPython becomes better because of you being a part of it. It doesn't matter whether this is your first microcontroller board or you're a computer engineer, you have something important to offer the Adafruit CircuitPython community. We're going to highlight some of the many ways you can be a part of it!

Adafruit Discord

The Adafruit Discord server is the best place to start. Discord is where the community comes together to volunteer and provide live support of all kinds. From general discussion to detailed problem solving, and everything in between, Discord is a digital maker space with makers from around the world.

There are many different channels so you can choose the one best suited to your needs. Each channel is shown on Discord as "#channelname". There's the #projecthelp channel for assistance with your current project or help coming up with ideas for your next one. There's the #showandtell channel for showing off your newest creation. Don't be afraid to ask a question in any channel! If you're unsure, #general is a great place to start. If another channel is more likely to provide you with a better answer, someone will guide you.

The CircuitPython channel is where to go with your CircuitPython questions. #circuitpython is there for new users and developers alike so feel free to ask a question or post a comment! Everyone of any experience level is welcome to join in on the conversation. We'd love to hear what you have to say!

The easiest way to contribute to the community is to assist others on Discord. Supporting others doesn't always mean answering questions. Join in celebrating successes! Celebrate your mistakes! Sometimes just hearing that someone else has gone through a similar struggle can be enough to keep a maker moving forward.

The Adafruit Discord is the 24x7x365 hackerspace that you can bring your granddaughter to.

Adafruit Forums

The Adafruit Forums are the perfect place for support. Adafruit has wonderful paid support folks to answer any questions you may have. Whether your hardware is giving you issues or your code doesn't seem to be working, the forums are always there for you to ask. You need an Adafruit account to post to the forums. You can use the same account you use to order from Adafruit.

While Discord may provide you with quicker responses than the forums, the forums are a more reliable source of information. If you want to be certain you're getting an Adafruit-supported answer, the forums are the best place to be.

There are forum categories that cover all kinds of topics, including everything Adafruit. The Adafruit CircuitPython and MicroPython category under "Supported Products & Projects" is the best place to post your CircuitPython questions.

Be sure to include the steps you took to get to where you are. If it involves wiring, post a picture! If your code is giving you trouble, include your code in your post! These are great ways to make sure that there's enough information to help you with your issue.

You might think you're just getting started, but you definitely know something that someone else doesn't. The great thing about the forums is that you can help others too! Everyone is welcome and encouraged to provide constructive feedback to any of the posted questions. This is an excellent way to contribute to the community and share your knowledge!

Adafruit Github

Whether you're just beginning or are life-long programmer who would like to contribute, there are ways for everyone to be a part of building CircuitPython. GitHub is the best source of ways to contribute to CircuitPython itself. If you need an account, visit https://github.com/ and sign up.

If you're new to GitHub or programming in general, there are great opportunities for you. Head over to adafruit/circuitpython on GitHub, click on "Issues", and you'll find a list that includes issues labeled "good first issue". These are things we've identified as something that someone with any level of experience can help with. These issues include options like updating documentation, providing feedback, and fixing simple bugs.

Already experienced and looking for a challenge? Checkout the rest of the issues list and you'll find plenty of ways to contribute. You'll find everything from new driver requests to core module updates. There's plenty of opportunities for everyone at any level!

When working with CircuitPython, you may find problems. If you find a bug, that's great! We love bugs! Posting a detailed issue to GitHub is an invaluable way to contribute to improving CircuitPython. Be sure to include the steps to replicate the issue as well as any other information you think is relevant. The more detail, the better!

Testing new software is easy and incredibly helpful. Simply load the newest version of CircuitPython or a library onto your CircuitPython hardware, and use it. Let us know about any problems you find by posting a new issue to GitHub. Software testing on both current and beta releases is a very important part of contributing CircuitPython. We can't possibly find all the problems ourselves! We need your help to make CircuitPython even better.

On GitHub, you can submit feature requests, provide feedback, report problems and much more. If you have questions, remember that Discord and the Forums are both there for help!

ReadTheDocs

ReadTheDocs is a an excellent resource for a more in depth look at CircuitPython. This is where you'll find things like API documentation and details about core modules. There is also a Design Guide that includes contribution guidelines for CircuitPython.

RTD gives you access to a low level look at CircuitPython. There are details about each of the core modules. Each module lists the available libraries. Each module library page lists the available parameters and an explanation for each. In many cases, you'll find quick code examples to help you understand how the modules and parameters work, however it won't have detailed explanations like the Learn Guides. If you want help understanding what's going on behind the scenes in any CircuitPython code you're writing, ReadTheDocs is there to help!

CircuitPython Built-Ins

CircuitPython comes 'with the kitchen sink' - a lot of the things you know and love about classic Python 3 (sometimes called CPython) already work. There are a few things that don't but we'll try to keep this list updated as we add more capabilities!

This is not an exhaustive list! It's just some of the many featuers you can use

CircuitPython supports 30-bit wide floating point values so you can use int's and float's whenever you expect

tuples, lists, arrays, and dictionaries

You can organize data in ()', []'s , and {}'s including strings, objects, floats, etc

classes/objects and functions

We use objects and functions extensively in our libraries so check out one of our many examples like this MCP9808 library for class examples

lambdas

Yep! You can create function-functions with lambda just the way you like em:

>>> g = lambda x: x**2>>> g(8)64

Things to watch out for!

The wide body of python libraries have not been ported over, so while we wish you could import numpy, numpy isn't available. So you may have to port some code over yourself!

For the ATSAMD21 based boards (Feather M0, Metro M0, Trinket M0, Gemma M0, Circuit PlayGround Express) there's a limited amount of RAM, we've found you can have about 250-ish lines of python (that's with various libraries) before you hit MemoryErrors. The upcoming SAMD51 chipset will help with that a ton but its not yet available)

Non-Express boards like Trinket M0 and Gemma M0 and non-Express Feathers do not include all of the hardware support. For example, audioio and bitbangio are not included.

Integers can only be up to 31 bits. Integers of unlimited size are not supported.

Windows 7 Driver

What's the COM?

First, you'll want to find out which serial port your board is using. When you plug your board in to USB on your computer, it connects to a serial port. The port is like a door through which your board can communicate with your computer using USB.

We'll use Windows Device Manager to determine which port the board is using. The easiest way to determine which port the board is using is to first check without the board plugged in. Open Device Manager. Click on Ports (COM & LPT). You should find something already in that list with (COM#) after it where # is a number.

Now plug in your board. The Device Manager list will refresh and a new item will appear under Ports (COM & LPT). You'll find a different (COM#) after this item in the list.

Sometimes the item will refer to the name of the board. Other times it may be called something like USB Serial Device, as seen in the image above. Either way, there is a new (COM#) following the name. This is the port your board is using.

Install Putty

If you're using Windows, you'll need to download a terminal program. We're going to use PuTTY.

The first thing to do is download the latest version of PuTTY. You'll want to download the Windows installer file. It is most likely that you'll need the 64-bit version. Download the file and install the program on your machine. If you run into issues, you can try downloading the 32-bit version instead. However, the 64-bit version will work on most PCs.

Now you need to open PuTTY.

Under Connection type: choose the button next to Serial.

In the box under Serial line, enter the serial port you found that your board is using.

In the box under Speed, enter 115200. This called the baud rate, which is the speed in bits per second that data is sent over the serial connection. For boards with built in USB it doesn't matter so much but for ESP8266 and other board with a separate chip, the speed required by the board is 115200 bits per second. So you might as well just use 115200!

If you want to save those settings for later, use the options under Load, save or delete a stored session. Enter a name in the box under Saved Sessions, and click the Save button on the right.

Once your settings are entered, you're ready to connect to the serial console. Click "Open" at the bottom of the window. A new window will open.

If no code is running, the window will either be blank or will look like the window above. Now you're ready to see the results of your code.

Great job! You've connected to the serial console!

Advanced Serial Console on Mac and Linux

Connecting to the serial console on Mac and Linux uses essentially the same process. Neither operating system needs drivers installed. On MacOSX, Terminal comes installed. On Linux, there are a variety such as gnome-terminal (called Terminal) or Konsole on KDE.

What's the Port?

First you'll want to find out which serial port your board is using. When you plug your board in to USB on your computer, it connects to a serial port. The port is like a door through which your board can communicate with your computer using USB.

We're going to use Terminal to determine what port the board is using. The easiest way to determine which port the board is using is to first check without the board plugged in. On Mac, open Terminal and type the following:

ls /dev/tty.*

Each serial connection shows up in the /dev/ directory. It has a name that starts with tty.. The command ls shows you a list of items in a directory. You can use * as a wildcard, to search for files that start with the same letters but end in something different. In this case, we're asking to see all of the listings in /dev/ that start with tty. and end in anything. This will show us the current serial connections.

For Linux, the procedure is the same, however, the name is slightly different. If you're using Linux, you'll type:

ls /dev/ttyACM*

The concept is the same with Linux. We are asking to see the listings in the /dev/ folder, starting with ttyACM and ending with anything. This will show you the current serial connections. In the example below, the error is indicating that are no current serial connections starting with ttyACM.

Now, plug your board. Using Mac, type:

ls /dev/tty.*

This will show you the current serial connections, which will now include your board.

Using Mac, a new listing has appeared called /dev/tty.usbmodem141441. The tty.usbmodem141441 part of this listing is the name the example board is using. Yours will be called something similar.

Using Linux, type:

ls /dev/ttyACM*

This will show you the current serial connections, which will now include your board.

Using Linux, a new listing has appeared called /dev/ttyACM0. The ttyACM0 part of this listing is the name the example board is using. Yours will be called something similar.

Connect with screen

Now that you know the name your board is using, you're ready connect to the serial console. We're going to use a command called screen. The screen command is included with MacOS. Linux users may need to install it using their package manager. To connect to the serial console, use Terminal. Type the following command, replacing board_name with the name you found your board is using:

screen /dev/tty.board_name 115200

The first part of this establishes using the screen command. The second part tells screen the name of the board you're trying to use. The third part tells screen what baud rate to use for the serial connection. The baud rate is the speed in bits per second that data is sent over the serial connection. In this case, the speed required by the board is 115200 bits per second.

MacOS screen command using example board name

Linux screen command using example board name

Press enter to run the command. It will open in the same window. If no code is running, the window will be blank. Otherwise, you'll see the output of your code.

Great job! You've connected to the serial console!

Permissions on Linux

If you try to run screen and it doesn't work, then you may be running into an issue with permissions. Linux keeps track of users and groups and what they are allowed to do and not do, like access the hardware associated with the serial connection for running screen. So if you see something like this:

then you may need to grant yourself access. There are generally two ways you can do this. The first is to just run screen using the sudo command, which temporarily gives you elevated privileges.

Once you enter your password, you should be in:

The second way is to add yourself to the group associated with the hardware. To figure out what that group is, use the command ls -l as shown below. The group name is circled in red.

Then use the command adduser to add yourself to that group. You need elevated privileges to do this, so you'll need to use sudo. In the example below, the group is adm and the user is ackbar.

You'll need to logout and log back in. Then you can verify that you have been added to the group using the command groups.

Troubleshooting

From time to time, you will run into issues when working with CircuitPython. Here are a few things you may encounter and how to resolve them.

CPLAYBOOT, TRINKETBOOT, FEATHERBOOT, or GEMMABOOT Drive Not Present

You may have a different board.

Only Adafruit Express boards and the Trinket M0 and Gemma M0 boards ship with the UF2 bootloader installed. Feather M0 Basic, Feather M0 Adalogger, and similar boards use a regular Arduino-compatible bootloader, which does not show a boardnameBOOT drive.

MakeCode

If you are running a MakeCode program on Circuit Playground Express, press the reset button just once to get the CPLAYBOOT drive to show up. Pressing it twice will not work.

Windows 10

Did you install the Adafruit Windows Drivers package by mistake? You don't need to install this package on Windows 10 for most Adafruit boards. The old version (v1.5) can interfere with recognizing your device. Go to Settings -> Apps and uninstall all the "Adafruit" driver programs.

Windows 7

The latest version of the Adafruit Windows Drivers (version 2.0.0.0 or later) will fix the missing boardnameBOOT drive problem on Windows 7. To resolve this, first uninstall the old versions of the drivers:

When running the installer, you'll be shown a list of drivers to choose from. You can check and uncheck the boxes to choose which drivers to install.

You should now be done! Test by unplugging and replugging the board. You should see the CIRCUITPY drive, and when you double-click the reset button (single click on Circuit Playground Express running MakeCode), you should see the appropriate boardnameBOOT drive.

CircuitPython RGB Status Light

The Feather M0 Express, Metro M0 Express, Gemma M0, and Trinket M0 all have a single NeoPixel or DotStar RGB LED on the board that indicates the status of CircuitPython. Here's what the colors and blinking mean:

steady GREEN: code.py (or code.txt, main.py, or main.txt) is running

pulsing GREEN: code.py (etc.) has finished or does not exist

YELLOW: Circuit Python is in safe mode: it crashed and restarted

WHITE: REPL is running

BLUE: Circuit Python is starting up

Colors with multiple flashes following indicate a Python exception and then indicate the line number of the error. The color of the first flash indicates the type of error:

GREEN: IndentationError

CYAN: SyntaxError

WHITE: NameError

ORANGE: OSError

PURPLE: ValueError

YELLOW: other error

These are followed by flashes indicating the line number, including place value. WHITE flashes are thousands' place, BLUE are hundreds' place, YELLOW are tens' place, and CYAN are one's place. So for example, an error on line 32 would flash YELLOW three times and then CYAN two times. Zeroes are indicated by an extra-long dark gap.

CIRCUITPY Drive Issues

You may find that you can no longer save files to your CIRCUITPY drive. You may find that your CIRCUITPY stops showing up in your file explorer, or shows up as NO_NAME. These are indicators that your filesystem has become corrupted.

This happens most often when the CIRCUITPY disk is not safely ejected before being reset by the button or being disconnected from USB. It can happen on Windows, Mac or Linux.

In this situation, the board must be completely erased and CircuitPython must be reloaded onto the board.

You WILL lose everything on the board when you complete the following steps. If possible, make a copy of your code before continuing.

2. Double-click the reset button on the board to bring up the boardnameBOOT drive. 3. Drag the erase .uf2 file to the boardnameBOOT drive. 4. The onboard NeoPixel will turn blue, indicating the erase has started. 5. After approximately 15 seconds, the NeoPixel will start flashing green. 6. Double-click the reset button on the board to bring up the boardnameBOOT drive. 7. Drag the appropriate latest release of CircuitPython .uf2 file to the boardnameBOOT drive.

It should reboot automatically and you should see CIRCUITPY in your file explorer again.

If the LED flashes red during step 5, it means the erase has failed. Repeat the steps starting with 2.

If you haven't already downloaded the latest release of CircuitPython for your board, you can find it here.

2. Double-click the reset button on the board to bring up the boardnameBOOT drive. 3. Drag the erase .uf2 file to the boardnameBOOT drive. 4. The boot LED will start flashing again, and the boardnameBOOT drive will reappear. 5. Drag the appropriate latest release CircuitPython .uf2 file to the boardnameBOOT drive.

It should reboot automatically and you should see CIRCUITPY in your file explorer again.

If you haven't already downloaded the latest version of CircuitPython for your board, you can find it here.

Running Out of File Space on Non-Express Boards

The file system on the board is very tiny. (Smaller than an ancient floppy disk.) So, its likely you'll run out of space but don't panic! There are a couple ways to free up space.

The board ships with the Windows 7 serial driver too! Feel free to delete that if you don't need it or have already installed it. Its ~12KiB or so.

Delete something!

The simplest way of freeing up space is to delete files from the drive. Perhaps there are libraries in the lib folder that you aren't using anymore or test code that isn't in use.

Use tabs

One unique feature of Python is that the indentation of code matters. Usually the recommendation is to indent code with four spaces for every indent. In general, we recommend that too. However, one trick to storing more human-readable code is to use a single tab character for indentation. This approach uses 1/4 of the space for indentation and can be significant when we're counting bytes.

Mac OSX loves to add extra files.

Luckily you can disable some of the extra hidden files that Mac OSX adds by running a few commands to disable search indexing and create zero byte placeholders. Follow the steps below to maximize the amount of space available on OSX:

Prevent & Remove Mac OSX Hidden Files

First find the volume name for your board. With the board plugged in run this command in a terminal to list all the volumes:

Replace /Volumes/CIRCUITPY in the commands above with the full path to your board's volume if it's different. At this point all the hidden files should be cleared from the board and some hidden files will be prevented from being created.

However there are still some cases where hidden files will be created by Mac OSX. In particular if you copy a file that was downloaded from the internet it will have special metadata that Mac OSX stores as a hidden file. Luckily you can run a copy command from the terminal to copy files without this hidden metadata file. See the steps below.

Copy Files on Mac OSX Without Creating Hidden Files

Once you've disabled and removed hidden files with the above commands on Mac OSX you need to be careful to copy files to the board with a special command that prevents future hidden files from being created. Unfortunately you cannot use drag and drop copy in Finder because it will still create these hidden extended attribute files in some cases (for files downloaded from the internet, like Adafruit's modules).

To copy a file or folder use the -X option for the cp command in a terminal. For example to copy a foo.mpy file to the board use a command like:

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